Sunday, Janurary 11--The National Sport of Japan

There’s no better way to spend a Sunday afternoon than watching thousands of pounds of human flesh flying around a dirt ring. Courtesy of yet another ITT tour, we attended the opening day of the Winter Grand Sumo Tournament in Tokyo today.

Outside the stadium, banners bearing the names of the wrestlers were flapping in the breeze and fans without tickets were lined up to watch the big guys arrive for their matches. Inside the arena, we found that the seats were arranged on two levels, facing the north, south, east and west sides of the dohyo, or ring. The upper level seats, where we were sitting, are the cheap seats and resemble theater seats. The box seats on the lower level go for about $100 each, and are actually cushions on the floor, clustered in groups of four per box. While sitting on the floor for nine hours holds no appeal for me, it does apparently come with benefits--the price of a floor seat includes a bento (box lunch) and souvenirs. Hanging from the rafters above the second floor seats are portraits of the champions of the past 32 sumo tournaments.

All of the action takes place in the dohyo, which is situated on a raised platform, and is bordered by rice bags. The object of the sport is to either force an opponent past the rice bag boundary or make him touch the ground with some part of his body other than the soles of his feet, using one of the 82 official techniques recognized by the sumo association. Sumo is a full-contact sport, and involves pushing, shoving, and even the occasional slap as each wrestler tries to get a hold on the other’s belt (found out if the belt comes off and the wrestler is left standing in his birthday suit, he automatically loses the match). The matches frequently last only a few seconds, especially if one wrestler sidesteps a charging opponent—the laws of physics mean its difficult to stop the momentum of an object of such considerable mass, and the aggressor simply falls on his face.

A wrestler moves up through the ranks of sumo by consistently winning matches. While promotions are often difficult to achieve, demotions can occur with only one losing tournament. The lower-ranked wrestlers face off early in the day, and more important matches are scheduled for the afternoon. These matches draw the largest crowds, as well as television coverage. As a result, some of the wrestlers have numerous sponsors, which boosts the financial reward for the winner of that wrestler’s match.

Sumo is known as the national sport of Japan, but is somewhat less popular today than in the past. One reason for this is the increasing domination of foreign wrestlers—the Japanese have fewer local wrestlers to cheer for. Currently there are only two yokozuna (highest ranking wrestlers) and they are both Mongolian. Some of the more prominent wrestlers have also been behaving badly, with scandals ranging from inappropriate comments to the media to drug use to the beating death of a lower-ranked wrestler by his higher-ranking stablemates. Sumo is a very ritualistic sport, with a long history of honor, respect, and obedience among its wrestlers. Recent scandals are very offensive to long-standing fans of the sport. In spite of all this, the stadium was sold out today.

The Winter Grand Sumo Tournament will continue for another fourteen days, and the wrestler with the best record at the end of that time will be the champion. Since we don’t get Japanese TV at the house, I’ll have to keep up with the results in the newspaper. There are five more Grand Sumo Tournaments during the year, with the next one in Tokyo scheduled for May. By the time we buy our tickets for that one, I will have a favorite wrestler and will be able to cheer his name right along with his Japanese fans.